You can take a horse to water…

There’s a phrase which goes, “You can take a horse to water but you can’t make him drink”. The lateral ( as opposed to literal) meaning being that there are some tasks that it is rather hard to complete, especially if it’s not all completely within your power, i.e. it relies on another party to take action.

Well on my recent trip to Portugal I found out how things work there.

Sitting by a small lake at Coudelaria Oliveira Santos on a Sunday morning it was possible to encourage the young Lusitano stallions (known as the baby Dragons) to feed close to the edge of the lake. This allowed me to get lovely images of them on the land with their reflections in the water. I asked Lisa and David, the owners whether the stallions ever went into the lake. They said they had never seen it and didn’t know. My expectation was therefore that this wouldn’t happen.

So we sat on the edge of the lake and just took pleasure in watching the youngsters feeding and interacting for a while.

Then suddenly one of the babies decided to go for a swim. This was a sheer joy to see, especially when he and his brother decided it would be good to roll in the water, right up to the moment when it became apparent that this meant getting one’s face, and possibly ears wet! Oh no this was not to be!

So they started coming out again after a little cooling dip.

Ah but now you are wondering what about the final part, did they drink?…….

Here’s the evidence!

We definitely didn’t make them drink, but what an incredible joy to see this little morning escapade.